"Who is penalized for complaints about trying to do her best?” Exelrod asked the assembled panel of seven women and five men. “The woman."

Pao was a stellar employee who spearheaded investments in patent management company RPX and sat on the board of directors for Flipboard, Exelrod said. Despite that, he said, Kleiner Perkins management failed to stop harassment from male employees and unjustly promoted men while keeping her in a junior partner position.

Exelrod quoted from a review that Pao's mentor and boss, John Doerr, wrote in 2007: “Ellen, in your first year you have contributed extensively and I’m delighted that you chose to join KPCB…You are an exceptionally talented partner, you care about KPCB and it shows, we care about you.”

Pao had been given some negative feedback during her time at KPCB as well, with colleagues who called her untrustworthy and territorial. Kleiner Perkins has used this negative feedback to justify why Pao was passed up for promotion.

Exelrod compared those negative elements to the performance reviews of Chi-Hua Chien and Amol Deshpande, men who were junior partners at the same time Pao was. Both of them were later promoted to senior partner, while Pao was passed up.

"Amol should be more willing to admit when he does not know something,” one review said. "Amol can be territorial about his work, which has benefits and drawbacks.” Yet another comment about Chien noted that he "is highly aggressive and opinionated, which isn’t a bad thing per se.” Another read, "He comes off as brash and not open to other people’s views.”

Exelrod told the jury that these kinds of comments about investing partners at Kleiner Perkins were not reflective of how contentious a person Pao was. Rather, they were common for investing partners.

Pao has claimed she was harassed by her colleague Ajit Nazre, with whom she had a brief relationship in 2006. According to her, she ended the relationship after he made inappropriate comments to her, stopped including her in meetings, and told companies not to work with her. Exelrod described a management that sat on its hands while harassment occurred and even promoted Nazre, even though it knew of the issues that Pao and other women had with him.

After the two broke up, Pao says the harassment continued, although she didn't bring it to the attention of senior executives until 2007. Exelrod explained that Pao confided in Senior Partner Ray Lane, who suggested the two put their differences aside and wrote, "This will be put behind us, only if we do not make a mountain out of a mole hill. Believe me, I’m happy to be involved and work on worthwhile outcomes.”

"Mr. Nazre was punished in some way by some reduction of bonus,” Exelrod told the court. “And despite everything she [Pao] had been saying about him, he was promoted to a senior partner in late 2008.”

Finally, Exelrod turned to the limited number of women in investor positions at Kleiner Perkins as proof that the company was not interested in promoting women. The company had been founded in the early '70s, and until Junior Partner Aileen Lee was promoted to senior partner in 2005, KPCB had never once promoted a female junior partner to a senior partner position, Exelrod said.

“None of the managing partners have ever been female while Ms. Pao was still there,” he added.

Exelrod suggested that this was deliberate on KPCB’s part, which showed through in her excellent performance reviews. Kleiner Perkins, Exelrod said, asked itself, "'Do we want to keep Ms. Pao, do we see her having promise at this firm?' And the answer was yes. But they wanted to keep her at a junior partner level.”

Indeed, Exelrod said that Pao had been one of the few junior partners to nurture a company that went to an initial public offering—RPX, the patent defense company. Still, she never made senior partner. Three of her male colleagues—Wen Hsieh, Chi-Hua Chien, and Amol Deshpande—did, even though none of them had a company get acquired or IPO.

Pao is asking for $16 million in damages.

Not a team player

Kleiner Perkins claims that Pao wasn’t promoted because she wasn't qualified and didn’t get along with the rest of the staff, and that the company has had a stellar track record in supporting women as investors and entrepreneurs.

The firm, represented by Lynne Hermle, showed the jury negative reviews of Pao's performance from her peers and her bosses from every year that she worked there, saying things like “you say that you’d like to be valued as a respected leader at KPCB. To do that you need to create trusting relationships with all partners, irrespective of different styles.”

Hermle said that the reviews showed that Pao couldn’t handle her growing responsibilities. In 2011, one review stated, “Ellen is not viewed as a good team member.” Another from a year later wrote, "There is significant improvement necessary.”

”She complained about things she insisted that others were getting that she wasn't getting,” Hermle argued. "You’ll see these accusations made both inside and outside Kleiner Perkins. She complained that she was working harder than others, men and women.”

With respect to Nazre's advances on Pao, Hermle said that Pao had never clearly conveyed how disturbed she was to Kleiner Perkins management, and instead privately logged her grievances for years in order to sue the firm later.

KPCB took appropriate action as soon as it understood the gravity of Pao's experiences with Nazre, Hermle said. At first, Hermle told the jury, Pao asked that Nazre not be punished for his infractions although her boss and mentor, John Doerr, wanted to fire him for his behavior. Pao tendered her resignation in 2007 (but ultimately did not leave the company) for reasons unrelated to Nazre’s actions or discrimination at KPCB, and in an e-mail to a colleague about Nazre’s improprieties, Pao admitted that she urged Doerr not to fire Nazre:

John seems to want to punish him professionally, which I told him is the wrong thing to do right now. Ajit’s personal life is unstable; I don’t think destabilizing his professional life is a good idea. And you and I have talked about this—professionally he’s really very amazing at what he does, and I learn a ton from him. I was pretty blunt with John: I told him that if he wants to get rid or anyone I would remove both Trae [Vassallo] AND Wen [Hsieh] before Ajit. I was also explicit about the fact that I’m not leaving because of Ajit.

Later, Pao went to the firm's then-COO Eric Keller to report the harassment by Nazre of another female colleague, Trae Vassallo. “Immediately, Mr. Keller called outside counsel asking for an investigator,” Hermle told the court. That counsel recommended Steven Hirshfeld, who began his investigation immediately and concluded that Vassallo’s claims were true. But Pao dragged her feet in cooperating with the investigator, according to Hermle, and Hirshfeld ultimately concluded that Pao’s claims did not have merit. Nazre left the firm shortly thereafter.

Further Reading

Hermle said that while Kleiner Perkins may not have a 50-50 gender split, it's much better than other venture capital firms. "Despite what is happening in the [tech] industry, Kleiner Perkins has recruited women, many women," Hermle told the jury. In fact, she said, an outside survey recently looked at 813 VC firms. "604 of them had zero women [as investing partners], 12 firms had 3 or more women who were investors, and one firm was at the top, and that was Kleiner Perkins."

While Pao may have considered herself qualified to be a senior partner, her bosses did not, said Hermle. "Being an investing venture capitalist is a very tough job," Hermle said. She continued:

It is not performed by many people. It is performed well by even fewer. Of 28 junior partners [that worked there while Pao worked at KPCB], 11 of those junior partners remain today, and only 2 have become senior investing partners at KPCB.

Why wasn’t Ellen Pao successful at Kleiner Perkins as an investing partner? Ellen Pao did not succeed as an investing professional because she didn’t have the necessary skills. She didn’t come close. And despite her belief that she was outstanding that’s simply not true.

After the opening arguments concluded, Exelrod called his first witness: Trae Vassallo, a woman whose harassment had been reported by Pao, but had never spoken publicly about it before.

The politics of note taking

Vassallo said she, like Pao, was harassed by Nazre. He had invited her out to dinner twice and made inappropriate advances toward her; once even showing up at her hotel room in a bathrobe during a business trip. But she also commented on smaller moments where she felt slighted by her bosses. Vassallo sometimes smiled and chuckled as she spoke, as if she were a bit embarrassed to be recounting her story.

She had never made it a secret that she wanted to be a senior partner. "That was my goal, it was to be promoted," she said on the stand. "So I was always pushing, asking, am I on track? What do I need to work on?” She said she had worked on critical investments with Nest Labs and fully expected to be promoted. But she was passed up, while her three male colleagues were promoted.

Still, she testified that "my understanding was that I was on track for [promotion] but there was no commitment that that was going to happen."

Another incident happened at a company retreat, where many of the firm's employees and partners were present. "I was one of the lead people putting together the green tech strategy, yet I was put in the back row of the discussion. Which seems petty, but people were arranged by how much they could contribute to the discussion." Vassallo testified. “I was actually insulted." Pao was also in the back, she added.

Then, Lane asked Vassallo to take notes despite several employees junior to her being present at the retreat. She refused.

"A person who's taking notes can't contribute to the conversation," Vassallo told the jury. Then Lane looked at Pao and asked her to take notes. Pao refused as well, and a male employee finally offered to do the note taking. On cross-examination, Vassallo said she later talked to Lane about it and he said he hadn’t meant it as an insult and was not angry that Vassallo had refused to do the note-taking.

Hermle asked Vassallo if she had told colleagues later that she "knew Ray was from another generation." She confirmed that she had.

She testified until about 4:15pm, at which point the jury was excused for the day. The Pao vs. Kleiner Perkins trial is expected to last four to six weeks.